Posts by Wellyboot

Lebanon now hit with deadly walkie-talkie blasts as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war

Three year olds get the logic of blame passing - not my fault, he made me do it!

Re: If I were a world leader or in the administration thereof. . .

US & German spooks ran a company (Crypto AG) out of Switzerland for many years making compromised encryption machines (and healthy profit). UK refurbished Enigma machines for years after WW2 and sold them on with the same 'uncrackable' line as used by the Germans pre war. Other instances undoubtedly exist, what can you do, build your own 'everything'?

Spy agencies are devious, many clever people spend their waking hours trying to think up new ways to reach a goal.

Re: If I were a world leader or in the administration thereof. . .

Battery overload is more incendiary than explosive, 3 grams of PETN has been mentioned, that'd tally with the pager blast effects seen.

Quite a few nation states have the capability to produce tiny dedicated chips capable of waiting for a specific signal before setting of a charge.

China claims Starlink signals can reveal stealth aircraft – and what that really means

Re: Starlink? What about starlight?

Starlink constellation uses a small set of frequencies and provides a near continuous level of transmission with a reasonably small power fluctuation, it's a far better starting point for backscatter filtering than anything else.

Re: I'm skeptical

Stealth aircraft are designed to prevent returning a radar signal in the direction it arrived from, all aircraft have a large radar cross section when viewed form above*, the problem is that when flying at low level below them is an entire planet also bouncing the signal back (Doppler shift radar fixes this).

* the only shape that will get the same radar return from any angle is a sphere.

OpenAI's latest o1 model family tries to emulate 'reasoning' – tho might overthink things a bit

Implied assumptions

The '9 apples is correct'* answer only applies if you assume that in the process of making lunch the other 20 are no longer within the cafeteria, there is a quite logical answer of '29 apples' that merely requires the assumption that all apples that changed state (apple > apple in lunch) are still apples and still in the cafeteria.

A valid conclusion for the original question is that the LLM is now making assumptions that are more in line with human perception of the questions intended meaning.

Will this in any way reduce the tendency of LLMs to hallucinate?

* 9 apples would be a definitive answer if the original question was changed to ‘How many unused apples...’

Domo arigato, Mr Roboto: Japan's bullet trains to ditch drivers

Re: Just to clarify a point

fair bit of nerding ... Register comments

Yup, You're in the right place !

Oracle wants to power 1GW datacenter with trio of tiny nuclear reactors

I'd be surprised if the model for DC power wasn't along the lines of a simple zero liability model -

Contract to splash a billion or two to a 3rd party company that will provide x Gwh per day for y years. 3rd party company then build SMRs with excess capacity that can be flogged onto the open market.

It's down to legislation to provide a plan to prevent said 3rd party company just shutting up shop as the SMRs reach EoL instead of decommissioning.

Cyber crooks shut down UK, US schools, thousands of kids affected

Re: WTF ...

I'd posit that the gormless fools are brought up on a 'new & shiney' methods mentality, detailed problem analysis is just so boring!

An awful lot of modern 'anything' is based on thinking that started out as chalk or pencil scribbles quite a long time ago.

Re: Prevent kindergarteners

Throw in a couple of chalk boards and you can teach anything to anyone willing to learn.

That method works all the way past post-grad level.

What do Uber drivers make of Waymo? 'We are cooked'

Re: Not a cheap gig to run

Many $80k Jags.

Given that OEM spares invariably cost many times the their 'bought new in a car' value I think this is a viable business model.

Re: Waymo business model

Waymo only has to use a subsidised predatory pricing model until all the competition folds...

Woman uses AirTags to nab alleged parcel-pinching scum

Re: "police declined to pursue the matter"

Commiserations.

The loss of a horse in 1916 – modern equivalent is a car/van and we know how often those thefts get investigated. As it’s a civil matter not worthy of investigation your acquaintance can obviously just acquire a free replacement from plods own stables late one evening. /sarc

More than a decade ago people were complaing that uniformed plod only spent a day (usually just the remainder of that shift) 'investigating' theft before giving up, halcyon days indeed.

Re: "police declined to pursue the matter"

Not paying taxes is second only to to armed rebellion on the govermental scale of bad things that can happen. I wish I was joking.

Re: "police declined to pursue the matter"

Unfortunately it's moved from perception to solid fact for far to many crimes.

Just remember, don't get spotted by plod talking on the phone while parked with the engine running, that's far more serious than actual theft.

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Re: Good Old C64

That brings back memories!

The 1541 having basically the same architecture as the C64 itself (only 2k ram though) allowed for these features (pushing a small independent program onto drive 8 to do the disk copy onto drive 9) that were never really exploited, if there’d been a faster connection* and more memory the C64/1541 could have been a viable home cluster in the mid ‘80s.

The first 1541 drives were all configured as drive 8, you had to cut jumpers on the mobo to make it no. 9, 10 or 11. I and possibly many others soldered a simple switch in place to make it a bit more user friendly.

* than the slow serial daisy chained link. (170K drive copied in 30? mins)

Re: Two significant characters?

I used two character variables on C64 because 'short' well suited the 40 character lines.

Not to mention the '38911 basic bytes free' !

Boom Supersonic takes baby steps toward breaking the sound barrier

Ye canna change the laws of physics cap'n!

Concorde carried about 25%* of the passengers as the new 747 (late '60s new) and burned about two thirds of the fuel to go 85% as far, so Concorde was more fuel efficient as an aircraft but was burned by the 747 fuel cost per passenger mile.

I'd not be surprised if the new jet was similar when compared to current subsonic jets.

*high density layout, it was nearer 30% in a typical 747 seating plan.

The Windows Control Panel joins the ranks of the undead

Re: You said “command line”

Most people are cushioned by high level applications and don't work at the pointy end of making computers do things directly (no safety net!). It was called a command line because originally after the computer powered on it sat waiting for commands (entered one line at a time) and anything the operating system could do was accessible from there (via teletype or VDU terminal). previous to it's invention the operator couldn't do a lot more than flip switches to read a pre-prepared card stack/tape reel do do anything.

The DOS CLI had (has?) a very limited range of functions only because the original underlying hardware was very limited, it occupied a desktop not an entire room. My guess is that the term 'Shell' originated from the fact that Unix was providing a not too robust common looking CLI to the actual working parts of different systems.

By the early '80s minicomputer CLIs had a level of complexity that allowed near programming language levels of control and MS 'PowerShell' is just a marketing change of name now that it does have the full blown capabilities of other 'shell' named systems.

You can call it a Shell or CLI, to my old brain they're utterly interchangeable

AGI is on clients' radar but far from reality, says Gartner

Re: AGI? Now you have two (or more) problems.

I'm not keen on a digital Gandhi either, There is the argument that Gandhi was too idealistic and focused on the end goal (however noble), then again I wouldn't want an AI that has the necessary Machiavellian understanding of human self interest making any 'big' decisions, The best* we could hope for is another 'General Franco' and his was not a nice regime.

* best as in successful, 'only' a few hundred thousand dead, political repression for his four decades in power before he died of old age.

Disney claims agreeing to Disney+ terms waives man's right to sue over wife's death

Re: Kind of a self-answering question ?

Very sleazy,

This can't stand, the next version of T&Cs* will add "and descendants in perpetuity" to it.

* from every company.

Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth

... it had very 'dusty' tables?

And a dog with a head cone sitting on a desk...

A little bit of effort and it could be taken for a surrealist art piece.

Report slams Boeing and NASA over shoddy quality that's delayed SLS blastoff

Re: Tanks

That leads to the 'Below Average Pay' part, how did the pay for being a LOX tank welder on a Saturn back in the '60s compare to Grandpa Joe who welded Chevy trucks ?

'You get what you pay for' holds true for any skilled occupation.

Re: IOW.....

TBF, Beancounters didn't override engineering in M^cD-D while it existed (and as the two companies prior)

The reputation for slipshod work that Boeing has achieved in the last decade because of the 737-max debacle is not helped by the fact that what competent QC inspector would want to have Boeing on the CV these days, especially at the current 737 build rate (387 last year)

Re: Historically Boeing has a way of buying lenient trreatment

The Next AF1 (USAF designation VC-25B) aircraft are being customised from a pair of cancelled new build 747s that had been sitting around in a Mojave storage compound for half a decade.

Wiki* has a page, spoiler they're behind schedule with QC issues!

*I know but the ref. section is good.

NASA pushes back missions to the ISS to buy time for Starliner analysis

Re: Frozen

To install the software that flew the last unmanned test flight?

Re: End game...

I take it that depressurising the starliner to open the side hatch needs more than a simple software override, is it not structurally capable of reentry unpressurised?

Report: Tech misconceptions plague the IT world

How many?

>>Twenty-two percent believe iOS-based products are immune to all attempts to hack them.<<< in a global survey

Statcounter has global iOS share at 27.74% (Jul '24) Can we therefore conclude that 4/5 of iOS users are muppets?

The tinfoil lined one...

Keir Starmer says facial recognition tech is the answer to far-right riots

Re: "Roger Hallam ... also encouraged 'arrest as a tactic'"

"Not comparable" In the very short term you could be correct. However, missing hospital appointments isn't just inconvenient - two outcomes are (A) you got to the back of queue (waiting however long), there are many conditions where early diagnosis is the biggest influence on survival chances and (B) you now require urgent treatment due to the missed appointment.

Re: Encryption

'Provisionals', 'Continuity', new handles every couple of decades.

Re: Old, old, news

Martinusher is merely alluding to the fact that better results may be achieved in the long term by the more traditional policing method of following actual evidence.

The Wests policy for Ukraine isn't a failure, it will just take quite a while bleeding Russia before the FSB allows a change of leadership.

Re: Hmm

All this 'duty of care' stuff plod has to do these days really spoils the enjoyment of watching idiots do idiotic things.. :)

For about 30 seconds.

Everybody lifts the net and passes it forward...

It was used by Voltaire to describe the execution of Admiral Bing for failing to demonstrate sufficient aggression with his fleet in 1757.

It worked - Subsequently Royal Navy captains would engage with the enemy every time unless overwhelmingly outgunned.

South Korea to force e-commerce marketplaces to pay vendors faster

As these marketplaces take our cash within hours* of shipping I think moving it on to the vendor within 14 days after that is perfectly reasonable.

*modern banking - near instant account updates.

Boeing's Starliner proves better at torching cash than reaching orbit

Re: Should have sent it back unmanned to start with.

I would suggest that fixing the lemon is Boeings problem (& cash) to sort out.

Re: Boing boing

That'd work, An empty* crew Dragon with a set of suits to bring the astronauts back, Once the Dragon is on a guaranteed docking path the Starliner can be sent back empty to clear the docking port.

I'm sure a suitable mission logo involving a Dragon & Starliner can be created very quickly :)

*May need a suit tech to ride with it - I'm not that up to date on technical aspects the actual suits.

Re: Space Junk,

F15 (also the F18 & C17) - All very good aircraft originally designed by McDonnell Douglas...

India contemplates compulsory dynamic 2FA for digital payments

Re: So OTP is fine, but biometrics is better ?

Madness, for the last couple of years one decent picture is all that's needed to produce utterly convincing fake video.

Using an official ID as the source picture will give criminal types the best possible starting point.

Here we go again with more AI crime prediction for policing

Re: Soo.....

It will only send plod to known problem areas, at least until it can predict accurately that a bunch of Bananas will be stolen from 29 Acacia Road at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon.

Tesla that killed motorcyclist was in Full Self-Driving mode

Re: Heck; I can't even trust my Volvo

Joining a motorway is legally the same as turning left when you join another road from a T-junction - it's going from (slip) road A onto (motorway) road B.

The increased speeds involvedmay require everyone within quarter of a mile approaching the merge point to react to any of the vehicles in front doing something 'odd'. So yes, I also indicate when joining a motorway because the point of indicating is to warn other drivers of your intent to do something and as we all know - sometimes s*** can happen really fast.

Proofpoint phishing palaver plagues millions with 'perfectly spoofed' emails from IBM, Nike, Disney, others

did not expose any Proofpoint customer data

However, the customers of those customers (IBM, Nike, Disnet et al.) were affected in their millions.

What a bunch of weasels.

Silicon, stars, and sulfur make Apollo's unlikely legacy

Re: Correction?

Now that the Cold War is back into quite a warm phase* I'm looking forward to the rate of technical improvement accelerating again.

* I'd say mid 1960s level, no where near as bad as the late 1950s... yet.

All true. The tools we're capable of creating now would boggle the mind of engineers from a century ago when this began.

I also believe in things being overbuilt when failure is going to kill people, 'knowing' it's capable of supporting 273% over design load is better than the previous 'we're fairly certain it's between 2.5 & 3.0 times over capacity'.

Curiosity rover is crushing it: Ran over a rock and found pure sulfur

Re: So, all it needs to find now

Finding coal would be 'the' premier result of all Martian exploration up to this point.

Forget security – Google's reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit

Re: Slavery

US companies aren't bothered by all those international rules.

Point them at the 13th amendment instead, Apple used that in court when objecting to being asked to break into Iphones confiscated by the authorities.

Now you see it

Now you don't

Now you see it

Now you don't

CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made

Re: no excuse for not deploying on ... cannery channels

Glass bottles are acceptable when the pub is shut